i haven't been sleeping very much (or at all, really) since i have been in china because i can't seem to adjust to the sheet of plywood that i have for a bed. its not literally a sheet of plywood, but it might just as well be one. i took these pictures last week from the balcony of my apartment. the one on the left was taken at 7 a.m. and the one on the right at 7 p.m. shunde is a city of a little over one million people and it is astonishing how dirty it is, even after having been to other drastically underdeveloped places around asia and also to massive cities. this place makes bangkok look like something about which al gore could only hope to dream.
this place, however, is quite developed. in fact, it seems to be drastically overdeveloped. there are highrise apartment complexes all over the place. these places just can't be full because there is nowhere for all of these people to work in this city, unless they are driving an hour each way to guangzhou. they could be, but it seems unlikely given the way in which these people operate.
while i was on my way to hong kong and macau a few weeks ago, i met a dutch man who was very funny and the first person i had met in shunde who spoke fluent english since i came here. he was, of course, leaving. we were joking about the swine flu outbreak and as i write i am remembering that we were going through hong kong border checkpoints joking about it on may 1st, the day that the first case was confirmed in hong kong. anyway, he was talking about a previous business trip to china, which was before the sars outbreak in 2003. he recalled seeing a sign in an elevator that read, "no spitting."
before coming to this part of the world, i was under the impression that people in asia were obsessed with cleanliness, that it was something over which they took great pride. i found this to be the case in cambodia, where people would sweep the dirt off of their floors made of dirt until their brooms were worn all the way down. they did the best with the cards they were dealt. people in thailand are of a similar mindset. but the people in china, at least in this city, really are not concerned with cleanliness, hygiene or generally just doing things that are in the best interest of one's health. i tried to find dental floss the other day to no avail. the concept of a daily shower is lost.
these people don't have the same viable excuse as the rest of seriously impoverished asia, or even the rest of seriously impoverished china - they all have running water, electricity, cars, etc. both of the apartments i have lived in here have given me nightmares. i couldn't sleep in the first one most nights because it was so disgusting. i am still cleaning up after the previous tenants of my second place.
instead of taking their garbage from their apartments to the garbage bin on the ground floor of the building, people just let it pile up in front of their doors until someone else handles the situation. certainly it saves them the trip, but it also attracts massive amounts of massive cockroaches, rats and other critters. it doesn't seem to me to be overly difficult to take out the trash with you when you leave the building. it is what i do each day to keep bugs out of my apartment, but all of my neighbors keep so much waste around that there is nothing more i can do to combat the bugs than keep a full arsenal of various anti-bug weaponry on me at all times.
i guess these people are used to having filthy, disease ridden insects and rodents in their general vicinity, but there is no reason for that kind of thing. there is no reason to spit in an elevator or anywhere else for that matter. there is no reason to use the horn on your car when you are turning instead of your blinker. since nobody pays attention to horns being honked any longer, i asked one of the people that i work with what they do to get someone's attention when there is an actual traffic emergency. this question was met with utter confusion and is a perfect example of the disparity in methods of logical reasoning between the east and west.
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